AwesomeE has another kid. I knew this baby was coming for months, as one typically does when the mum in question is your best friend. Now, I think there is some excuse for not making clothing until the baby is here. After all, you don’t know how big the baby will be until they are born. I, for example, pretty much arrived in the world ready for the 3-6month clothing.
But there’s really no excuse for not even having the yarn until 1 week before I went to visit her and her expanded family. Yet that’s where I found myself. Because while I have considerable stash, I have very little baby friendly yarn, which must meet the following:
- Machine washable (unless you want it going straight into the family heirloom cedar chest after a brief photo shoot where everybody breathes a sigh of relief that this wasn’t when the baby chose to spit up)
- Appropriate colors – cheerful and bright. Not goth. I also try for gender neutral
- Sport or DK weight. Because I’m making another baby surprise jacket. Because that is what I do.
I don’t have stash meeting all of these. So the Saturday before we left for our visit, I realized I needed to get to the yarn store. The good news is that there is now one quite close – a long walk or a 7min drive. As this was back in early January, it coincided with some serious snow coming in, so I also knew I needed to tackle this early. Luckily, they had some fun squishy sport yarn that fit the bill. I picked up extra as well so now I have an emergency1 Baby Surprise jacket stash with a range of compatible colors.
And then I knit the heck out of that jacket over the next 7 days. It may or may not have still been drying on the back seat on the way down and I might just have been sewing on the buttons hours before we met up with AwesomeE and the Little Awesomes, and her Mum. We had a lovely day together and I learned that they pants I made for Little Awesome 1 (the most advanced baby wear I’ve done) were used and are still around.
Here is the little jacket, hastily photographed before it was delivered to the baby. I enjoyed how it came out. I tried for a more organic approach to the stripes rather than a perfectly regular and per-determined pattern and I think it came out balanced and pleasing in the color mix. The buttons came out of my button tin.
- By which I mean a “procrastination” stash ↩︎
Little Awesome 2 appreciates your efforts, as he’s an Adventure Baby and has worn it to Little Awesome 1’s events twice already and not frozen.
Washability greatly appreciated though still untested, as are the colors, though goth would’ve been acceptable too. 😀
Oddly, all of my goth coloured yarn seems to recommend hand wash only… and the baby yarns at the store didn’t come in goth colors.